Follow Me at high speed - SOLVED

J R · Feb 4, 2016

pyrate said:
what speed are you slowing to?

Pyrate,

Honestly, all of my stuff is packed up for the trip to Texas at 5:00am tomorrow. I usually keep it between 12 & 15 but I know I ran it down below 10 and just felt it was too slow. I'll check some of my runs when I get unpacked.

EDIT: I just dug my pad out and found one where I ran 11 waypoints where I went from 5 to 20 three different times.

Jerry

Mutilatedjak · Feb 6, 2016

Solo and follow me was at first a huge disappointment. After the update at the end of last year the jerkyness was eliminated and the shots are actually useful. I will have to try faster ones now! What exact values did you end up using? Any video?

Here is mine for reference (though I doubt solo flew faster than 20mph in any of it).

erikgraham · Feb 6, 2016

Mutilatedjak said:
Solo and follow me was at first a huge disappointment. After the update at the end of last year the jerkyness was eliminated and the shots are actually useful. I will have to try faster ones now! What exact values did you end up using? Any video?

Here is mine for reference (though I doubt solo flew faster than 20mph in any of it).

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I'm pretty sure I did 1,800 cm/s. That's approx 40mph. For reference, the default highest speed rabbit is 1,500 cm/s.

In the test, the top speed we got to was 40mph. Started out at 20 and kept speeding up. The video has a ton of jello so I didn't post it. I may go try another run today with an ND filter. Either way I'll post something by tonight - hopefully a better quality video than what I've got.

EDIT: as far as I can tell, setting performance to rabbit has no effect in follow me. Basically all it does is change wpnav_loit_speed to 1,500cm/s. But to increase speed in following, we need to use mission planner or tower to change the wpnav_speed value (note the absence of "_loit_" in that param).

pyrate · Feb 6, 2016

J R said:
Pyrate,

Honestly, all of my stuff is packed up for the trip to Texas at 5:00am tomorrow. I usually keep it between 12 & 15 but I know I ran it down below 10 and just felt it was too slow. I'll check some of my runs when I get unpacked.

EDIT: I just dug my pad out and found one where I ran 11 waypoints where I went from 5 to 20 three different times.

Jerry

thanks
If you end up around Frisco shout

JD Films · Feb 6, 2016

@erikgraham can the parameters only be changed using an Android device? I only have an iPhone. Curious to see how fast you can get it following! I hope to do this with off-road desert racing vehicles soon.

Also did you see post #13 here Using an iphone and follow me feature

erikgraham · Feb 6, 2016

JD Films said:
@erikgraham can the parameters only be changed using an Android device? I only have an iPhone. Curious to see how fast you can get it following! I hope to do this with off-road desert racing vehicles soon.

Also did you see post #13 here Using an iphone and follow me feature

You can change params using Mission Planner (Windows), APM 2.0 (Mac), Tower (Android) - all of which are free. There is an app called Mav Pilot for iOS which costs something like $12 last I checked. I haven't used it. I *think* you might be able to edit params with it.

As for the post you linked to about Tower Wear, I didn't read the whole thread, but the watches are just a way to control the drone during follow me without having to reach into your pocket to use your phone. I actually got a Pebble watch for this purpose. You can do stuff like changing altitude from the watch while it follows. But the drone still follows the phone, not the watch.

It seemed like a good idea when you have the phone with an antenna strapped to your back, but i stopped using it and frankly, I'm not even sure where that pebble watch is. That was all about a year to a year and a half ago. Things have probably changed a lot since then, so my info may be out of date.

erikgraham · Feb 6, 2016

Catastrophic Failure!

So I went out today, equipped with an ND8 filter to address the Jello I had in my first test flight. I also picked a more dramatic setting (a frozen lake with cliffs on each side and iced over waterfalls). I'd scouted this location earlier in the week and actually did a couple Follow Me runs. In fact, it was that scouting session that convinced me to figure out how to increase speed.

So today, everything was going great. We were cruising along at 35mph, ready to start pushing for 40 and above. The Solo was positioned behind us and to the right so it would fly over the lake. The footage looked pretty amazing. I was even able to vary altitude from 10 meters up to 80 meters and the Solo still had no trouble keeping up.

Then disaster struck. It looked like a motor pod failure; Not a complete failure, it was intermittent at first. Dip, spin, recover. Dip, spin, recover. And so on. Obviously we stopped the car, but the Solo was loosing altitude no matter what I did.

It finally splashed down in one of the few spots of open water in the lake. My wife (the driver) and I just laughed. 10 or 20 meters in any direction and it would have landed on Ice - where it's possible one of the ice fishermen could have rescued it for me. Bye bye Solo. Bye bye GoPro Hero4 Black. Bye bye Peau 3.97mm lens.

I'm fairly certain it was indeed a motor pod failure. I won't be seeking a warranty replacement from 3DR, but I did send them the logs. Next week when I can get back to my PC with Mission Planner I'll take a look myself.

Meantime... I do NOT recommend anyone attempt to mod the WPNAV_SPEED param above 1500cm/s. Give me a few days to figure out what went wrong and to run some more tests on another Solo.

I'll post the footage from my first test later - even though the footage is pretty crappy. If I don't post it tonight, I will definitely put it up tomorrow night.

Patrice · Feb 6, 2016

erikgraham,
I am very interested in you posting how to correct this issue but please keep in mind that some of us are not tech savvy and might need step by step guidance!
Looking forward to it.

Ngaanyatjarra Media · Feb 6, 2016

Sorry to hear about your loss Eric. I wonder if there could be a way to make the Solo float... perhaps a watertight box in the accessory bay? Not sure if there would be enough displacement to lift the battery though.

RichWest · Feb 6, 2016

erikgraham said:
Catastrophic Failure!

Bummer...

Maddog · Feb 7, 2016

Sorry Eric- at least Solo made the ultimate sacrifice in the furtherance of modern science.

RolandS888 · Feb 7, 2016

Really sorry to hear about this @erikgraham sounds like "dip, spin, recover" is happening all too often these days.
Please do post your findings when you get into the logs.
If anything good can come out of this loss, it will be WHY this is happening.

mecummings.cr · Feb 7, 2016

Eric... I think I saw a similar dip-spin-recover today by my Solo just before it landed in the lake outside the back of my house. I would have jumped in the water to go get it but the alligators here in Florida can be a bit protective of their territory. I sent logs to 3DR earlier today and will see what happened. Your story seems a bit similar to mine except I wasn't kicking up the performance, just testing a simple flight plan with Tower around a small unfrozen lake. Sounds like we need a button to recover from the dip-spin-recover in a future software upgrade. Sorry for your loss.

SteveReno · Feb 7, 2016

Sorry to hear this Eric,
It's my biggest fear for my Solo to take a dip in the ocean.
I test flights are 90% over Ocean or Bays around here in CC TX.
But i trust my Solo so much, I don't even think about it.
We take too much for granted sometimes.

J R · Feb 12, 2016

erikgraham said:
Catastrophic Failure!

Eric,

Extremely sorry to read about the loss of your bird! When it happens to a guy like you it's a wake up call to everyone out there that it can happen to them as well. Boy, that had too sting a bit.

Like you, I kind of expect failure at some point especially when flying so much over rivers, lakes and oceans and pushing the limits of the product. I am concerned with the life of these motors or pods. They seem very short lived.

I hope it's your intent to "Get back on the horse" but would certainly understand it if you didn't. A bit spendy to just drop from the sky. Your contributions to this forum have been very significant to me as I'm sure they are to many others. I thank you very much for your very significant, insightful and articulate contributions and hope to get to read many more of them in the future!

Jerry

erikgraham · Feb 12, 2016

J R said:
Eric,

Extremely sorry to read about the loss of your bird! When it happens to a guy like you it's a wake up call to everyone out there that it can happen to them as well. Boy, that had too sting a bit.

Like you, I kind of expect failure at some point especially when flying so much over rivers, lakes and oceans and pushing the limits of the product. I am concerned with the life of these motors or pods. They seem very short lived.

I hope it's your intent to "Get back on the horse" but would certainly understand it if you didn't. A bit spendy to just drop from the sky. Your contributions to this forum have been very significant to me as I'm sure they are to many others. I thank you very much for your very significant, insightful and articulate contributions and hope to get to read many more of them in the future!

Jerry

Thanks Jerry. As far as getting back on the horse... already done! I have a couple Solos left. Still haven't heard from 3DR on the motor pods.

pyrate · Feb 12, 2016

good to hear, you would be missed

mecummings.cr · Feb 12, 2016

If you are setting the WPNAV_SPEED parameter in Mission Planner do you do this before or after each waypoint or can you set a global WPNAV_SPEED parameter for the overall mission?

Also wondering why the spline waypoint parameter doesn't even show up in Mission Planner as an option. Any ideas?

erikgraham · Feb 12, 2016

mecummings.cr said:
If you are setting the WPNAV_SPEED parameter in Mission Planner do you do this before or after each waypoint or can you set a global WPNAV_SPEED parameter for the overall mission?

Also wondering why the spline waypoint parameter doesn't even show up in Mission Planner as an option. Any ideas?

Set Speed when planning a mission in Mission Planner or Tower, is different than changing the WPNAV_SPEED parameter. When you change the parameter, it is permanent. Think of changing the . If you do get speed changes while planning a mission in Mission Planner or Tower, that will only last until it encounters another set speed, or some other command in the list that "exits" that speed.

I haven't tested it, but WPNAV_SPEED doesn't seem to effect any of the smart shots except Following. Which actually makes sense since its only supposed to effect speed in missions and guided mode (guided = following). WPNAV_LOIT_SPEED seems to effect your speed during Smart Shots triggered from the Solo app - but I need to confirm that.

In Mission Planner, you need to do the speed change before any way points that you want executed at that speed.

No spline way points? Try updating Mission Planner. Or just make your life easier and use Tower.

erikgraham · Feb 12, 2016

So, I never did post the video...

Here it is. Skip a minute or more in for the higher speeds. According to the driver, we got up to 40 mph a few times. Looking back over it, I can't really pick out when those times were (but definitely after the 1:00 minute mark...). I *guess* around the 2 minute mark we are going pretty fast.

Unfortunately, I was being a little conservative and kept adding altitude to avoid trees. I way over did it, and by the end the Solo is up pretty high. If I had kept it lower to the ground, apparent speed would have been greater. None-the-less, you can get a feel for the speed by focusing on how quickly the car moves past trees and driveways on the side of the road.